How do you estimate how much your house is worth? Want to buy a new house? Besides common people, property dealers or banks and even real estate agents find it tough to value a property as not every attribute that can determine the price of a real estate asset is captured. Here is where Quantarium hopes to make a difference with AI driven real estate intelligence. Express Computer spoke to Clement Ifrim, CEO of Quantarium to discuss the relevance of AI for the real estate market
What was the inspiration behind creating Quantarium?
Quantarium was born of a quest. My colleague and friend John Smintina and I were in the technology field and decided to try our hand at real estate investing; when we embarked on that journey, we realized that the models used to do basic things- including valuing a house- were not sophisticated; John realized that his background in genetic computation and programming could lay the foundations for an algorithmic and AI-driven set of methodologies. Fast-forward to 2020 and we can properly claim to be a leading and innovative player in the burgeoning space of Real Estate AI.
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So is Quantarium your first entrepreneurial expression?
Indeed it is not but in some ways it’s the most profound. Right out of the gates, we were able to develop the highest-ranking Automated Valuation Model (AVM) available and today continue to enjoy that mantle. What’s most amazing, however, is how the team has surrounded the customer and built solutions of lasting and deeply practical – and contextual- value to a variety of buyers. To make a difference as a player in the world’s largest asset class is, for us, the realization of a dream.
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We hear a lot about AI but we find that much of it is hype. Help us understand a bit about hype versus reality
Yes, we like to say we have “Real AI” not “Rhetorical AI.” AI, Data, and Context are all bound together. Deeply verticalized solutions are important because specificity and context is essential in making AI practical and not ethereal or theoretical. As our CMO put it, Vertical AI is the “New Black.”
Data, Data, Data. Isn’t that the name of the game here?
Yes and no. Without data and consistent data models, our solutions don’t work. Data is multifarious- it comes from a variety of places, some public, others private and all necessary. Ingesting data, contextualizing it, and acting on it in a timely fashion- that’s the name of the game. So we rejoice at our simultaneous speed and scale. But yes, data is necessary though not sufficient. You need intelligence and wisdom to learn from it.
Clement, you are known in the industry as a team-first CEO. Can you tell us a bit about how that evolved?
There is no Quantarium without the people of Quantarium. Sure, we have IP and we have customers. But it is the team whose incredible ideas and constant “discomfort” with the status-quo that drives us forward. We have some of the most profound talent in the industry at Quantarium- from Data Scientists to Engineers, from Marketers to Sales Teams, from Entrepreneurs to Thinkers- we are lucky. Much of my time is spent talking to team members. I grow through that and hope to give some of their wisdom back, in other forms.
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